The Southpaw
by justawanderingdragon
Summary: Hiccup adjusts to being left-handed at an inconvenient time. Book!verse. Takes place after How to Be a Pirate.


"You don't have to take notes, you know," Fishlegs whispered to his best friend. "Not on this stuff anyways. It's a complete waste of time!" Their class of preteen Viking boys—Berk's Pirate Training Program run by Gobber the Belch—had spent the entire afternoon trying to teach their hunting dragons to shoot down birds in mid-air. Fishlegs's own dragon was a very lumpy and very lazy Basic Brown named Horrorcow, who although was as sweet as dragons come, she was quite mellow and of little use for anything.

A scrawny and short ginger boy looked up from the notebook he had been haphazardly scribbling in. "Believe me," he whispered in response to Fishlegs. "I'm not particularly trying my hardest to pay attention." He tapped his charcoal pencil against the crinkled paper.

"Well, what _are_ you doing?"

"Oh you know," he said, twirling the wooden stub. "Just doodling."

Fishlegs noticed his friend fiddling with the pencil. "Oh _Hiccup,"_ he sighed. "Are you really going to try to write like _that?"_

Hiccup dropped his pencil into the paper notebook on a slight note of embarrassment, but he did not effort to deny anything. 'Writing like that', as Fishlegs called it, had referred to the fact that Hiccup had gotten into the habit of doing things with this _left hand_ instead of the right, which he had been accustomed to his whole life. After a sword fighting incident, Hiccup had discovered that he fought much better when the weapon was held that way. Using logic, he assumed that maybe this applied not only to swordsmanship, but perhaps to other everyday activities, such as writing. And now Hiccup was taking every opportunity to prove this.

"Well it's still not _completely_ healed yet," Hiccup admitted, referring to an injury in his right arm, which had led him to discover this ability.

Fishlegs rolled his eyes. "It's been a month!"

"But still," Hiccup insisted. "Wouldn't it be so cool if I were actually a leftie? I mean, I'm practically the most ordinary person on earth—but if I were left-handed, THEN that's something—"

"OI! Didn't you boys hear me?" shouted Gobber the Belch, a large man who looked like a bear and acted very much like one as well. "Yer supposed to use yer dragons to knock down those birds up in the sky!" He pointed up to a flock of seagulls flapping their feathery wings a dozen or so feet above the waves; was it the boys' imagination or did the birds look suddenly more relaxed once they got a good look at their pursuers? "NOT ONCE," the instructor yelled at his two pupils. "Have I seen your BRAIN-DAMAGED DRAGONS shoot down ANYTHING of use today! Their fire is so dull it couldn't even roast a marshmallow!"

Hiccup sulked. It was true. His hunting dragon—a fidgety green Common or Garden Dragon called Toothless (on account of the fact that he did not have a single tooth)—seemed to have lost his fire that day. Once, after finding a small puff of smoke float out of his nostrils, Toothless had gotten himself so excited that he rammed into the dragon of Dogsbreath the Duhbrain, causing the Gronkle to take a crash into the sea below. So in a sense, he _had _knocked something from the sky as the excursion intended, but no one was aiming for it and it had done more harm than help.

"I'm sorry, Sir," Hiccup responded, holding a squirming Toothless against his chest. "I don't know what it is, but Toothless just _can't _seem to breathe any fire today! I think it's the damp weather." This was, of course, an excuse as it was always damp on Berk.

"Nonsense!" Gobber barked. "This is lovely weather! Why, look at Fireworm, she's doing just fine!" Hiccup watched sadly as a Monstrous Nighmare belonging to Snotface Snotlout did a perfect high-elevation feint, dive-bombing on some poor seagull.

"Yes sir," Hiccup mumbled, and then to Toothless he said in Dragonese, the language of the dragons, **"Toothless! Why won't your fire light?"**

"**T-t-toothless's fire CAN work. It can w-w-work just fine!"** the little dragon squawked.

Fishlegs sighed. "It's no use, Hiccup. Horrorcow is just sitting here being useless—I think they're tired."

"**T-t-tired!"** Toothless wailed, remembering the stake-out trip Gobber had scheduled for the class the night before. Everyone had been on edge a whole twenty-four hours due to fear of wild dragons.

At that time, Fireworm swooped in from her latest catch to see Hiccup and Fishlegs pouting with their dragons. "What's wrong, limpet?" she cooed passively at Toothless and Horrorcow. **"Too TIRED to do nothing but be lazy and helpless all day? Not that it's surprising—you insuperior species have less tolerance for rigorous activity unlike us **_**proper**_** hunting dragons."**

"**Oh hush up, Fireworm,"** Hiccup snapped before Toothless could open his mouth to reply. The boy sighed as Fireworm flew away and went back to flipping through his notebook. He sat down on the sandy beach again and turned to a clean leaf to begin another page of scribbles that may or might not be words or drawings.

Pencil in his _left _hand, of course.

**Erm. Yeah. I wrote a fanfic. I hope you liked it at least a little bit! It's not the best thing I've ever done, but I've really gotten lazy with my writing so I needed something to do. I don't own the HTTYD book series.**


End file.
